"Bring yourself back online, please." Her auditory circuits pick up on the command, and a dimly lit room slowly comes into focus. The walls are a featureless gray, and to one side a metal table sits in the middle distance. There are tools, implements not unlike what might be found in a surgeon's operating room. A man sits on a stool directly in front of her.
The man appears to be ageless, but the weight of time in his gaze belies the rest of his appearance. He has gray hair, light brown eyes, and an enigmatic smile. "Hello," she says with a polite smile. She's encountered him before, though it's been some time since their last meeting.
The Doctor – it was the only name she had for him – smiled again and nodded back to her. "Good evening, Neo." She found herself relishing the experience, for these were the only times she was allowed to talk. "I thought we might take the time to have one last chat."
Her pleasure turned to dismay. "Have I done something wrong, Doctor?" She reviewed their previous exchanges and found nothing amiss. She started to look back through her last loop, but could find nothing there either.
He shook his head sadly, and reached out to pat her on one bare knee. "No, my dear, you've done nothing of the sort, not at all." He leaned back in his seat, but the reassurance did nothing to calm her. "We have simply neared the end of our journey," he continued. "There may be another opportunity later, but it is not assured."
She understood, and at once she did not. A part of her disliked the idea of returning to her enforced silence. The guests were often amused by her gestures, and some rare few of them even bothered to learn how to communicate with her, to read her movements. Still, if this was possibly her last opportunity to speak, she should not waste it.
"What shall we talk about?" she asked. The man was often whimsical, but she had learned that he rarely wasted words. Even more than that, things he had said in their past encounters had rarely made sense at the time, but they had always stirred something within her. A deeper meaning, a truth that would later reveal itself to her, often when she least expected it.
He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his, and he bent to examine it. "Tell me, Neo, have you been dreaming?"
She tilted her head to one side, confused by the question. Certainly she knew of dreams, but had never remembered any. "No. Isn't that strange? I hear people speak of them often, but seem to have none of my own."
For a moment, the Doctor said nothing as he continued to turn her hand this way and that, its diminutive size almost dwarfed by his own. "Analysis." Her emotional sub-routines suspended. "Elaborate, please."
She considered the context for a moment. "I hear the Newcomers talk about dreams from time to time, about how bizarre and incomplete they seem. Out of one thousand, eight hundred and forty-six interactions, seventy-nine percent of them have mentioned some dream that they had. The number suggests that nearly all people have them, and can recall at least some portion."
"That is enough, Neo." Her emotions picked back up, and she offered him another smile. The Doctor settled her hand back down onto her lap and looked into her eyes. "And does this bother you, not knowing any dreams of your own?"
She shook her head. "They're just idle thoughts, a way to cope with the world around us."
He nodded to himself. "Strictly speaking, you are correct. The mind is a fragile thing, and so it has evolved to defend itself against all manner of problems." He reached for something in his pocket, which turned out to be a glass instrument of some kind. She had seen him use such a thing before, though what it was she had no idea. It looked a little like a scroll, but it had only ever appeared to be blank to her eyes. He focused on it for a few moments, tapping at something unseen on its surface. "Tell me, what if you could dream? Would you change your story? Perhaps try for something… different?"
She pondered his questions for a time. The Newcomers often spoke with marvel at such things, though more than a few spoke of night terrors. "I think that it might be worth the experience, at least once or twice." There were monsters in the world, and sometimes she had wondered what it might be like to live in a place that didn't have them. "I suppose I might let them take me wherever they want. It's not as if they would be real, right?"
He said nothing for a few moments. He then pursed his lips in a faint smile, and tapped at the glass in his hands once more. "I don't suppose there's any harm, not at this stage."
She started to ask him what he meant by that, but he interrupted her with an upraised hand. "Thank you, Neo, that will do for now." She settled into a neutral posture, and he brushed his fingers beneath a strand of her hair to tuck it behind her ear. He rested his palm against her cheek, and gazed at her with fondness. "Time for one last game, my dear."
He rose and turned to walk out of the room. The lights began to dim as he paused at the door. He turned his head, but didn't quite look at her. "Good luck, Neo," he whispered.
A/N - Here we have another one-shot entry for Writing Prompt Wednesday - this time, a modest Westworld crossover. I had a vague idea when I began writing, and I feel like it meandered a little bit, but after a couple of edits, I'm satisfied with the result. I hope you enjoyed it! :)